A user on the Internet today may generate a significant amount of data through his browsing history and online activity. This data can be very valuable for data mining to determine, for example targeted advertising, product development strategies, and behavioral research. However, much of this data is distributed across multiple systems. For example, individual websites use cookies to track user activity online. However, due to the “Same Origin Policy” websites may not be permitted to retrieve cookies of unrelated websites, thus shielding cookie data of a user for one website from another website.
Additionally, some websites split data such that cookie data is stored on the user's computing device, whereas data associated with the cookie is stored at the website server. Thus, in addition to the cookie data stored at the user's device, a user's Internet use may result in a wide distribution of his information throughout the Internet, resulting in a large data footprint. For example, social networking sites, online retailers, and blogs or micro-blogs authored are a few sites that may also contain information about the user.